Who is your mobile provider?

[The Penguin]

Mine is Telus

 

[King_Oni]

Mine is KPN (though not that it is of any relevance for any people not from The Netherlands, lol)

 

[atrocityexhibition]

Sprint here, but I have no idea if it's a "thing" anywhere outside the U.S.

 

[King_Oni]

Sprint here, but I have no idea if it's a "thing" anywhere outside the U.S.

I've heard of it, but it's not a carrier over here (nor in Germany or Belgium, as far as I know).

Though my scope of "heard of it"... I've heard of plenty of these providers by name. Not that it accounts for a lot, lol.

I think that T-mobile is one of the ones that seems to be pretty much everywhere (though, of that I don't know if they're in the US)

 

[wyverary]

T-Mobile is very popular here in the US in certain areas. The problem with the US is that it's so big there is no one carrier that is guaranteed to work wherever you go (unless you stick to large metropolitan areas). I use AT&T, only because where I live there is literally no other choice—they are the only provider from whom I can get any reception.

 

[King_Oni]

Hah... over here any provider guarantees a 99% coverage...

Guess what, I'm about 5 minutes away from an area that has no coverage, lol. But it is no mans land next to a highway of sorts next traintracks... not even a minute and you're out of it again.

Seems that coverage issues arise if you're in border areas (which considering the german border almost runs through town here). Though usually German carriers pick it up. But you'll get billed for an international call/text.

Just wondering; with all the providers in the US, do they share networks? Or are you limited to just that carrier? I know over here that all these providers share the same network, you just get billed from the one you have service from. In short; we don't have a seperate network for every provider. Is that similar in the US or do they all have their seperate antennas to set up coverage?

 

[Flinty]

MTS, which people outside Manitoba have only heard of when watching a Jets home game.

 

[wyverary]

Just wondering; with all the providers in the US, do they share networks? Or are you limited to just that carrier? I know over here that all these providers share the same network, you just get billed from the one you have service from. In short; we don't have a seperate network for every provider. Is that similar in the US or do they all have their seperate antennas to set up coverage?

No, as far as I know, and from my experience. If you're stuck to a certain carrier, you're at the mercy of whether they have a dedicated tower in your area.

 

[Harrison]

Mine is Orange, which incorporates T-Mobile and EE

 

[Nitro]

Here in the USA I have been a Verizon customer for over ten years now...I had several minor providers who had terrible coverage at first,then there was a decade of AT&T until they sold out to another company that would not provide me with a new phone for free or honor any of my customer loyalty to the original provider...that company took a dive really quick and AT&T bought the company back and began to woo me again,but I held firm to the big V...you only get to put the screws to me once...I have considered trying Sprint,but have issues with their coverage...I did have coverage issues at my present home until I asked to be let out of my contract with Verizon...they offered a solution of adding a network extender that relies on my computer connection to enhance their signal with a price tag of $250 attached to it...further up the chain of command,a supervisor said she would be willing to overnight ship it to me at absolutely no cost to me for my loyalty to them...I love having leverage

 

[Aeolienne]

The Phone Co-op - I switched to them so I could have a Fairphone.

 

[pjcnet]

Short answer:

Virgin Mobile

Long answer:

A nice old thread, my first mobile phone provider in the UK was Cellnet in the mid 1990s in the days when people still showed off, posing with mobiles. I paid £17.99 a month back then on what was the cheapest available contract before pay as you go even existed plus £2.99 for insurance that was compulsory for the first month and I still had to pay a £35 connection charge on top, then calls still cost a whopping 50p a minute peak and 20p a minute off peak (which was after 7pm, not 6pm) to landlines or other Cellnet mobiles with no inclusive calls what-so-ever, then if you wanted to call other mobile networks you'd need to think about a getting a mortgage to pay your bill. A little while later standard call charges were at least reduced to 40p a minute peak and 12p a minute off peak. You could forget about SMS text messages, they were barely used or heard of back then, they were available on digital phones that were quite new then, but only to the same network. I even paid over £200 for the mobile phone itself which would have cost around £400 without the contract that tied me in for a minimum of 18 months and there was a strict credit check, there was no inclusive phones on contract back then and that was a "cheap" entry level phone. Back in those days it was rare to be-able to use a mobile phone indoors because the signal was just too weak even with a newer digital mobile and you'd always be looking at the signal in different areas because drop outs were very common, especially if you travelled out of the city. Times have certainly changed.

A few years later Cellnet merged and changed to BT Cellnet and now they're O2, but I had such an awful service being overcharged on my bills with nothing but issues that I changed to Orange who were much better, but in the last 10 years I've been with Virgin Mobile since I have Virgin Media cable including phone, TV and broadband.


PS: I remember when the very first ever pay as you go mobile phone came out in the UK in 1997, here was the "awful" deal, but back then it actually wasn't that bad considering the cost of contracts and mobiles phones back then, although the phone itself was pretty dire:

"One2One - Up2You
Up2You gave you a mobile phone in a box with no contract. It cost a whopping £179.99. Top-ups cost £20 and you needed to buy one every ninety days. Call charges were high at 50p per minute for any time of day.

There was just one choice of handset, the Nortel m900, which became the UK's first GSM PAYG mobile phone."

Above quoted from History of PAYG mobile phones

Even worse One2One (now T-Mobile) had by far the worst reception back then and often you were lucky just to be-able to make a call, plus you suffered frequent drop outs on the move.

 

[Mr Allen]

Virgin Mobile SIM Only contract, was previously with Tesco Mobile, which runs on the O2 Network, so I went direct to O2 shop in Meadowhall to try and get a good deal, turns out Virgin were cheaper, £12 a month for 8 Gig Data, 1000 minutes and unlimited texts.

I keep getting emails from GiffGaff, offering some decent deals on minutes, texts and data for around the same price, and I think my 12 months with Virgin runs out around the end of October, so I might try and get GiffGaff around then, after giving 30 days notice to Virgin of course.